America’s biggest retailer may be in for an unexpectedly painful holiday season. Protesting low wages, spiking health care premiums, and alleged retaliation from management, Wal-Mart Stores workers have started to walk off the job this week. First, on Wednesday, about a dozen workers in Wal-Mart’s distribution warehouses in Southern California walked out, followed the next day by 30 more from six stores in the Seattle area.
The workers, who are part of a union-backed employee coalition called Making Change at Wal-Mart, say this is the beginning of a wave of protests and strikes leading up to next week’s Black Friday. A thousand store protests are planned in Chicago, Dallas, Miami, Oklahoma, Louisiana, Milwaukee, Los Angeles, Minnesota, and Washington, D.C., the group says.

In a conference call with reporters on Thursday, workers who were either planning to strike or already striking explained their situation. “We have to borrow money from each other just to make it to work,” said Colby Harris, who earns $8.90 an hour after having worked at a Wal-Mart in Lancaster, Tex., for three years. “I’m on my lunch break right now, and I have two dollars in my pocket. I’m deciding whether to use it to buy lunch or to hold on to it for next week.” He said the deduction from his bimonthly pay check for health-care costs is scheduled to triple in January. In 2013, Wal-Mart plans to scale back its contributions to workers’ health-care premiums, which are expected to rise between 8 percent and 36 percent. Many employees will forgo coverage, Reuters reports.

Sara Gilbert, a manager who was striking in Seattle, called in on her cell phone: “I work full-time for one of the richest companies in the world, and my kids get state health insurance and are on food stamps,” she said. Along with Target and Sears, Wal-Mart has plans to open retail stores at 8 p.m. on Thanksgiving night. Employees said they weren’t given a choice as to whether they would work on Thanksgiving and were told to do so with little warning. “They don’t care about family,” said Charlene Fletcher, a Wal-Mart associate in Duarte, Calif. She said she is expected to report for work at 3 p.m. on Thanksgiving Day. The workers said that when they complain about scheduling and other problems, management cuts their hours or fires people.

Is it still considering boycotting Black Friday when I never went before for anxiety reasons?

Well. At any rate, I plan to spend Thanksgiving with my parents and Friday trying to help reign the inevitable chaos. At least I don't have to worry about being trampled._________________Samsally the GrayAce

I don't want to advocate communism or anything, but SUPPORT LOCAL INDEPENDENT STORES.

I am the same as most other people and find it so easy to just go to a major chain store and find exactly what book/dvd/pair of pants/thirteen kilos of no name tampons I want but man it feels so much more satisfying to buy independent.

samsally, i am considering that i am still conducting a boycott even though a) i absolutely never go shopping on black friday and 2) i've hated walmart for years, and even if there were one near me (which there isn't) i wouldn't be caught dead there. i'm still one more customer that won't be shopping there!

and definitely, shop local. walmart's business model seems to be all about killing off the competition, and then paying such low wages that they actually reduce income levels around them. the town my mom used to live in used to have 3 department stores (one national chain, one area-wide chain, and one owned by a local family), a couple dress stores, a couple shoe stores - even a hat store. all locally owned. then they got a walmart, and all those stores went belly up. in fact, the last time i was there, i think both the grocery stores had closed, so people had to go to walmart for food. people go to walmart because they have no other option._________________aka: neverscared!

Wal Mart's stance: Fuck you, like we care, we have WAY more money to throw at lawyers so neener neener neener:
Wal-Mart Seeks to Head Off Worker Protests

By Shelly Banjo | The Wall Street Journal – 2 hours 13 minutes ago

Quote:

Wal-Mart Stores Inc. (WMT), hoping to head off worker protests at its stores over the Thanksgiving holiday, filed an unfair-labor-practice complaint against a union the company says is behind the protest plans.

The complaint, which Wal-Mart filed Thursday against the United Food and Commercial Workers International Union, asks the National Labor Relations Board to issue an injunction against worker rallies and pickets that have been staged at Wal-Mart stores and warehouses across the country for at least the last six months.

The protesting workers, who complain of low wages, short hours and poor working conditions, are members of OUR Walmart, or Organization United for Respect at Walmart, which was started in 2010 with financial support and advice from the UFCW. The union has been involved in previous efforts to represent Wal-Mart workers.

The union says that today OUR Walmart is "its own nonprofit organized by Wal-Mart workers and funded through dues that are voluntarily contributed," said UFCW spokeswoman Jill Cashen. OUR Walmart has called for protests at 1,000 Wal-Mart stores on the day after Thanksgiving, known as Black Friday, which is one of Wal-Mart's busiest shopping days.

Wal-mart says OUR Walmart is seeking union recognition and so by federal law can protest for only 30 days before collecting signatures to hold an employee vote, which it hasn't done. "We cannot allow the UFCW to continue to intentionally seek to create an environment that could directly and adversely impact our customers and associates," said David Tovar, a Wal-Mart spokesman.

OUR Walmart says that the protests aren't supporting unionization but are rather drawing attention to retaliation workers say they experience when they complain about pay and working conditions. "Wal-Mart is doing everything in its power to attempt to silence our voice," said Colby Harris, who has worked at a Lancaster, Texas, Wal-Mart for three years and makes $8.90 an hour.

Wal-Mart has publicly shrugged off the protests and complaints since OUR Walmart was launched in 2010. But the company confirmed that it has begun responding by sending in executives from the home office in Bentonville, Ark., to tamp down unrest at stores and sending instruction manuals to managers on how to legally respond to striking workers. In a number of stores, managers showed employees videos that depicted OUR Walmart as a campaign by the UFCW to urge workers to unionize.

ARLINGTON, Va. (AP) — President Barack Obama made a quick trip to a Virginia bookstore for some Christmas shopping. The president took his daughters, Sasha and Malia, to One More Page Books in Arlington, Va., on Saturday afternoon.

The White House says Obama was promoting an effort called "small business Saturday" to encourage shoppers to patronize mom-and-pop businesses after Thanksgiving. At the store, Obama held up his BlackBerry, apparently looking up a book title as he spoke with shop owner Eileen McGervey. He said "preparation" was the key to his shopping.

Obama brushed off a reporter's question about the looming "fiscal cliff," saying "we're doing Christmas shopping." The White House says Obama bought 15 children's books that will be given as Christmas gifts to family members.

_________________...if a single leaf holds the eye, it will be as if the remaining leaves were not there.http://about.me/omardrake

So... some reports are saying Walmart managed a record setting Black Friday, despite the protests and strikes. Yeah..._________________“Yields falsehood when preceded by its quotation”
yields falsehood when preceded by its quotation.